Hidden Creek | Page 2

was too fond of brown and green mixtures
which did not become his sallowness. He smiled very rarely, and when
he did smile, his long upper lip unfastened itself with an effort and
showed a horizontal wrinkle halfway between the pointed end of his
nose and the irregular, nicked row of his teeth.
Altogether, he was a gentle, bilious-looking sort of man, who might
have been anything from a country gentleman to a moderately
prosperous clerk. As a matter of fact, he was the owner of a dozen
small, not too respectable, hotels through the West, and had an income
of nearly half a million dollars. He lived in Millings, a town in a certain
Far-Western State, where flourished the most pretentious and
respectable of his hotels. It had a famous bar, to which rode the
sheep-herders, the cowboys, the ranchers, the dry-farmers of the
surrounding country--yes, and sometimes, thirstiest of all, the workmen
from more distant oil-fields, a dangerous crew. Millings at that time
had not yielded to the generally increasing "dryness" of the West. It
was "wet," notwithstanding its choking alkali dust; and the deep pool of
its wetness lay in Hudson's bar, The Aura. It was named for a woman
who had become his wife.
When Hudson came to New York he looked up his Eastern patrons, and
it was one of these who, knowing Arundel's need, encouraged the
hotel-keeper in his desire to secure a "jim-dandy picture" for the lobby
of The Aura and took him for the purpose to Marcus's studio. On that
morning, hardly a fortnight before the artist's death, Sheila was not at
home.
Marcus, in spite of himself, was managed into a sale. It was of an
enormous canvas, covered weakly enough by a thin reproduction of a
range of the Rockies and a sagebrush flat. Mr. Hudson in his hollow
voice pronounced it "classy." "Say," he said, "put a little life into the
foreground and that would please me. It's what I'm seekin'. Put in an
automobile meetin' one of these old-time prairie schooners--the old
West sayin' howdy to the noo. That will tickle the trade." Mark, who
was feeling weak and ill, consented wearily. He sketched in the
proposed amendment and Hudson approved with one of his wrinkled

smiles. He offered a small price, at which Arundel leapt like a famished
hound.
When his visitors had gone, the painter went feverishly to work. The
day before his death, Sheila, under his whispered directions, put the last
touches to the body of the "auto_m_obile."
"It's ghastly," sighed the sick man, "but it will do--for Millings." He
turned his back sadly enough to the canvas, which stood for him like a
monument to fallen hope. Sheila praised it with a faltering voice, but he
did not turn nor speak. So she carried the huge picture out of his sight.
The next day, at about eleven o'clock in the morning, Hudson called.
He came with stiff, angular motions of his long, thin legs, up the four
steep, shabby flights and stopped at the top to get his breath.
"The picture ain't worth the climb," he thought; and then, struck by the
peculiar stillness of the garret floor, he frowned. "Damned if the feller
ain't out!" He took a stride forward and knocked at Arundel's door.
There was no answer. He turned the knob and stepped into the studio.
A screen stood between him and one half of the room. The other half
was empty. The place was very cold and still. It was deplorably bare
and shabby in the wintry morning light. Some one had eaten a meager
breakfast from a tray on the little table near the stove. Hudson's canvas
stood against the wall facing him, and its presence gave him a feeling
of ownership, of a right to be there. He put his long, stiff hands into his
pockets and strolled forward. He came round the corner of the screen
and found himself looking at the dead body of his host.
The nurse, that morning, had come and gone. With Sheila's help she
had prepared Arundel for his burial. He lay in all the formal detachment
of death, his eyelids drawn decently down over his eyes, his lips put
carefully together, his hands, below their white cuffs and black sleeves,
laid carefully upon the clean smooth sheet.
Hudson drew in a hissing breath, and at the sound Sheila, crumpled up
in exhausted slumber on the floor beside the bed, awoke and lifted her

face.
It was a heart-shaped face, a thin, white heart, the peak of her hair
cutting into the center of her forehead. The mouth struck a note of life
with its dull, soft red. There was not lacking in this young face the
slight exaggerations necessary to romantic beauty. Sheila